25th Annual Community Seder a Great Success!

Submitted by BWC on Apr 11, 2012

The 25th Annual Community Seder has come and gone, and it was a huge success! Released from the heymish but cramped confines of our old venue, we welcomed 250 attendees ranging from 95 years to 6 months old, including 20 Shule families and many younger families! As a community-oriented event, the Seder and venue seemed to work particularly well - many people, including families with children, stayed well after the meal was over and just shmoozed.

This year's Seder was preceded by an extensive community conversation about dietary choices, food justice, animal rights, and how we as an organization provide a respectful and principled home for a variety of beliefs. You can read more about that discussion here. As a result of this conversation, our Seder plate this year dispensed with actual shankbones and featured wonderful clay bones made by our alef class, along with a beet to represent the blood that marked the Jews' doorposts. Also, as in past years, our Seder plate included an orange as a symbol of solidarity with the LGBT community and an olive as a symbol of our belief in the importance of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. Finally, for this year we added a tomato as a symbol of solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers Fair Food campaign for tomato pickers in Florida, which our Shule 5th graders supported this year. To learn more about these symbols or other elements of our Seder, you can download this year's Haggadah, and other booklets from our ritual observances.

Many thanks again to the amazing Seder team: Alice Rothchild, Jenny Hochstadt, Eli Dan, Lois Glass, Dan Klein, Shule director Jenny Silverman, and also the scores of others who worked hard in many different ways to make it the biggest and best yet! Contact the office if you'd like to become involved in our ritual committee.